LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES By Matthew Allen, Vice President, State Government Affairs
I am writing this article in early January as the California Legislature has returned to Sacramento to begin the second year of the 2025-2026 legislative session. We will be dealing with numerous bills that were held over from last year and that may or may not move forward in 2026. There will also be thousands of new bills introduced this year, many of which will have a direct impact on the health and vitality of the agricultural industry. Given all of this, I was recently asked my thoughts about what actually makes a bill or regulation “good.” This is an insightful question and has caused me to ponder a bit. Since I have been lobbying for a while now, perhaps I am just a tad jaded in how I view the merits of bills and regulations as they are introduced and then grind through the approval and implementation process. Layered into this, I personally am someone who thinks that fewer laws on the books is the way to go. In very general terms, I think that a “good” bill or regulation takes into account the perspectives of each of the stakeholders that would be impacted and is one that sets a baseline standard. Baseline standards on worker protections, private property rights and employer protections (the list goes on) are all very important in setting the rules of the road. The real problem is that what was originally a good idea is never quite left alone. Minimum wage laws immediately come to mind. Legislators and regulators (especially in California) like to tweak, tinker, break, double-down or duplicate that which has already been negotiated and addressed. Original laws were negotiated and outcomes determined based on feasibility and applicability. One example is California’s original ag overtime law. We were one of only a tiny handful of states that already had an existing overtime law on the books. It was a workable law until labor, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown decided in 2016 that it somehow didn’t. In fact, WG was told that signing the bill felt like the right thing to do even though the economics didn’t make sense. Unfortunately, that policy decision has had negative consequences for both employers and farmworkers. Another example is the Cal/OSHA outdoor heat illness prevention regulation. WG was a primary supporter of the originating regulation because a need was identified for a clear and enforceable prevention standard that would provide heat safety guidelines for employers and their employees in outdoor work
environments. That regulation has now been revised once and an additional revision will be happening soon as required by a statute that was passed a couple of years ago. Draft language for the updated standard has been released for comment and many of the suggested changes would be counterproductive and unworkable. Again, the examples above point to this problem of repeatedly revisiting laws when the justification to do so appear solely that we “can.” It’s not really a question of “should” we do so. There are unintended consequences for constantly changing areas of the law that have been settled. I am not an attorney, but I do recognize that sometimes court cases and precedent-setting occurs that mandate changes be made. That is quite understandable and is how our system of checks and balances operates. That said, I truly wish lawmakers would focus more on the question of “should” we pass this bill rather than focusing on “can” we pass this bill. My wishes haven’t come to fruition yet so I will stop writing and head back over to the Capitol to join our State Government Affairs Team in doing all we can to help your businesses and your employees thrive in California. It is truly an honor to represent you.
13 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com January – March 2026
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